Scrolling Pages With Ratings

	Is it any wonder that catastrophic injury lawyers do their utmost to avoid courts?
Posted By : Bill On 09/08/2016 11:30:00
On the 11th June 2016 the claimant was awarded judgment following a contested trial on liability. The defendant applied to the trial judge for permission to appeal, which was refused. That application was made to the Court of Appeal on paper and refused. It was renewed orally, and granted. A hearing date has been set for the 14th and 15th June 2017. It will therefore be two years between judgment and appeal hearing. During that time, the claimant, who is catastrophically brain damaged, will have to manage without compensation. Of course, if the appeal succeeds, no hardship will be caused. But if it fails, as we expect, it will be a massive injustice. Is it any wonder that catastrophic injury lawyers do their utmost to avoid courts?

	NHS and the cost of defending negligence claims
Posted By : Bill On 13/06/2016 13:45:00
The NHS makes such a fuss about the cost of defending negligence claims, usually with the implication that it’s the claimant lawyers who are to blame (which may sometimes be true, I accept). However, my experience is that they are not an easy defendant, and that cases which would settle easily against other defendants do not do so against them. There’s a judgment out earlier this month in which, in a very convoluted case, the judge said about the NHS’s primary argument: “It hardly needs stating that this is an extremely unattractive position to adopt and I am bound to observe that the Court of Appeal, so far as I can judge, at no stage had this potential consequence of its order drawn to its attention.”. He did go on to note that the NHS did put forward an alternative, pragmatic, submission. Enough said?

	Fixed costs in clinical negligence claims
Posted By : Bill On 02/06/2016 09:45:00
I see that “Health ministers have temporarily shelved controversial plans to impose fixed costs in clinical negligence claims of up to £250,000, bowing to pressure from lawyers not to introduce the scheme this autumn.”. That may be because of poor consultation. I'm quite sure, though, that the threat hasn’t gone away for ever – it’ll be back as soon as they can paper over the cracks. I'm doing a seminar next year in Manchester, with Barker Brooks (who gave me my two personal injury barrister of the year awards) on clinical negligence, and we think, at the moment, that we’ll divide it into above and below 250k, on the basis that lawyers will want to know how to make these claims profitable while still caring for the client.

	“Rules of engagement”
Posted By : Bill On 16/05/2016 15:15:00
I had a really interesting discussion recently about experts visiting claimants. As a result, I'm going to map out some “rules of engagement”, but I thought their experiences were worth sharing. The first expert arrived, didn’t introduce himself (I'm calling them all him, for an element of anonymity) properly, and effectively barged into the house and took over. The Claimant and his wife thought that the expert was rude. His report was inadequate, and he's been replaced. The second arrived an hour and a half late, having rung only 10 minutes before arrival, with a feeble excuse – “traffic”. I've been travelling the country, turning up on time for clients, for 25 years. He hadn't read the papers, and so appeared ignorant, and wrote an inadequate report. He's been replaced. The third was a defence expert (the first two were instructed on behalf of the Claimant). He offended the family by quizzing them about things they thought irrelevant to his task. They would like to complain about him, but there’s no easy way of doing so, other than complaining to the defence solicitors, and refusing access in future. The fourth seems to have been ok in meeting the claimant, but his report needs a lot of change to make it accurate. Not a very happy state of affairs! One of them, though, always behaves like that, and one always writes a report which has to be scrutinised for accuracy.

First	Previous	5	6	7	8	9	[10]	11	12	13	Next	Last